1. Field of the Invention.
This invention related to an improved multi-station insertion machine and to a method of operating the same.
2. Prior Art and Other Considerations.
United States Patents 2,325,455 and 3,260,517 relate to multi-station inserters which are presently produced and marketed by the assignee of the present application and well-known in the market as the Phillipsburg inserters. In the insertion machines of these patents, a master control document is withdrawn from a master control document station and moved onto an insert track which has a suitable conveyor means for moving the master control document past a plurality of insertion stations. As the master control document is thusly moved, additional documents from the insertion stations are stacked with the master control document to form a group of related documents or items. The master control document and its insertions are then inserted into a mailing envelope by well-known means.
United States Patent 3,260,517 is particularly directed to an improvement of United States Patent 2,325,455 and related to a device for deriving signals from particular master control documents and using those signals to control the subsequent selective insertion of documents from only selected insertion stations.
Once the control document and its inserts have been inserted into the mailing envelope, a determination must be made regarding the amount of postage to be applied to the envelope. In many environments and operations the determination of the postage amount for each envelope is a complex, or else inexact, endeavor.
As an example of such complexity, in the telephone and credit card industries envelopes are mailed monthly to customers and include such enclosures as one or more sheets comprising a statement of account, informational enclosures, and advertising literature. With respect to informational enclosures, the sender may send certain general interest enclosures to all customers while also enclosing one or more of many special interest enclosures to selected or targeted customers in accordance with the sender's estimation of the pertinence of the enclosure relative to each customer. Therefore, the weight of the envelopes can vary considerably from customer to customer depending on, for example, the number of sheets included in the statement of account and the number of items such as informational enclosures and advertising enclosures which are inserted in a customer's envelope.
The complexity of determining accurate postage was ameliorated with the advent of the apparatus and method taught in United States Patent 4,571,925, INSERTION MACHINE WITH POSTAGE CATEGORIZATION, commonly assigned herewith and incorporated herein by reference. In accordance with the teachings of United States Patent 4,571,925, a data processing system, or computer, operating in conjunction with an insertion machine makes a determination relative to postal allocation for a group of items or inserts in accordance with a projected group weight which is calculated by the data processing system on the basis of the per document weights of documents stored at the insert stations.
While the statement of account and, in some instances, the general interest and special interest informational enclosures, are primary or high priority "required" items for inclusion in a customer's envelope, the advertising literature may be less significant and not deserving of inclusion in the envelope. In fact, the advertising literature is often provided by third party advertisers who contract with the sender to include their third-party advertising documents in piggyback fashion along with the primary documents of the sender.
In such arrangements with third party advertisers, some third party advertisers direct that their third-party advertising documents be included with a customer's group of inserts or items if and only if the additional weight of the third-party advertising documents does not increase the postage amount for the customer's group. Other third-party advertisers, however, prefer that their third-party advertising documents be included along with a customer's group regardless of the impact of inclusion upon the postage amount for the group.
United States Patent 4,734,865, INSERTION MACHINE WITH AUDIT TRAIL AND COMMAND PROTOCOL, commonly assigned herewith and incorporated herein by reference, discloses a "chargeback" insert feed station. Third-party advertising inserts are fed from the chargeback station regardless of whether the weight of the third-party advertising insert increases the total weight of a customer's group sufficienly for the group to be classified in the next greater postage weight category (and thereby incur and additional postage charge). In addition, a count was kept of the number of times that feeding from a chargeback station actually occassioned additional postage charge, so that the additional postage charge could be passed on to the third party advertiser associated with the chargeback station.
In accordance with current practice, when an insertion machine is operated with more than one chargeback station, the chargeback stations are ranked according to priority. In accordance with the ranking, for a given customer a higher priority chargeback station is permitted to feed before a lower priority chargeback station can feed. However, whichever chargeback station pushes the customer's group into a greater postage category is charged for the entire amount of the postage cost increase.
In view of the foregoing, it is an object of the present invention to provide an insertion machine and method of operation thereof which accurately determines the weight of an envelope and equitably apportions postage cost among a plurality of third party advertisers.
An advantage of the present invention is the provision of an insertion machine and method of operation thereof which, by accurate determination of the weight of an envelope and its associated inserts, results in substantial financial savings.
An further advantage of the present invention is the provision of an insertion machine and method of operation thereof which is easily operated for determining the accurate weight of an envelope and its associated contents.
Yet another further advantage of the present invention is the provision of an insertion machine and method of operation thereof which is responsive to diverse criteria for deciding whether third party advertising documents are to be included in a customer's group of items.